Outlaw Kingdom: Bill Tilghman Was The Man Who Tamed Dodge City. Now He Faced A Lawless Frontier.

By Matt Braun

Outlaw Kingdom

Matt Braun


In 1889, Bill Tilghman joined the historic land rush that transformed a raw frontier into Oklahoma Territory. A lawman by trade, he set aside his badge to make his fortune in the boomtowns. Yet Tilghman was called into service once more, on a bold, relentless manhunt that would make his name a legend for all time--in an epic confrontation with outlaw gang leader Bill Doolin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466850989

Matt Braun

Matt Braun was the author of more than four dozen novels, and won the Golden Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for The Kincaids. He described himself as a "true westerner"; born in Oklahoma, he was the descendant of a long line of ranchers. He wrote with a passion for historical accuracy and detail that earned him a reputation as the most authentic portrayer of the American West. Braun passed away in 2016.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

A sea of campfires spread endlessly across the plains. Forty thousand people camping under a star-studded sky waited for the Oklahoma Land Rush.

Tilghman stood with his hands jammed in the pockets of his mackinaw. Though a brisk wind drifted down from the north, his coat was unbuttoned, and his gaze swept an inky darkness dotted with tongues of flame. His camp was located near the train tracks, and as far as the eye could see, the shadows of men were cast against the glow from thousands of campfires. Like him, they stared southward, awaiting the break of dawn.

What’re you thinking about, Bill?

Tilghman turned to face Fred Sutton. Old friends, they were partners in certain ventures revolving around the land rush. Sutton had operated a saloon and gambling establishment in Dodge City, where Tilghman had served as town marshal.

Way it appears, Tilghman said, lots of folks are gonna get the short end. I calculate more people—he motioned toward the blinking campfires—than there are homesteads.

Sutton nodded, looking out over the mass of humanity. He was a man of medium height, square-faced and clean-shaven, a greatcoat thrown over his shoulders. He held his hands out to the warmth of the fire.

Same old story, he said with a wry smile. Offer something for nothing and the world beats a path to your door. Simple human nature.

No argument there, Tilghman agreed. Everybody and his dog turned out for this one.

Their camp was on the line separating the Cherokee Outlet from the Unassigned Lands. Tomorrow, for the first time, land would be opened to settlement in Indian Territory. By government decree, a man could claim one hundred sixty acres for a nominal filing fee. The lodestone of free land had drawn eager homesteaders from coast to coast.

Tilghman wagged his head. Figures to be devil take the hindmost. Ought to be a helluva race.

At root was the scarcity of good farmland. The flood of settlers pouring west had already claimed the choice homestead lands; the clamor to open Indian Territory to settlement had swelled to a public outcry as western migration intensified. The primary goal of this land-hungry horde was known as the Unassigned Lands.

Embracing some two million acres of well-watered, fertile plains, it was land that had been ceded by the Creeks and Seminoles, as a home for tribes yet to be resettled. But the government eventually announced that it had no intention of locating Indians on these lands. The howls of white settlers then rose to a fever pitch, and their demands now included the Cherokee Outlet, which abutted the northern border of the Unassigned Lands.

The settlers were backed by several influential factions, all of whom had a vested interest in the western expansion. Already the Santa Fe and other railroads had crossed through Indian Territory, and competing lines had no intention of being left behind. Pressure mounted in Washington for a solution, equitable or otherwise, to the problem.

Opposed to settlement were the Five Civilized Tribes, who occupied the eastern half of Indian Territory, and a diverse group of religious organizations. The churches and missionary societies asserted that government dealings with Indians formed a chain of broken pledges and unfulfilled treaties. In that, the Five Civilized Tribes agreed vehemently. They had ceded the western part of their domain to provide other tribes with a home—not for the enrichment of white farmers and greedy politicians.

Tilghman took the pragmatic view. While serving as marshal of Dodge City, he had watched the Indians fight what was clearly a losing battle. At the forefront of the struggle was Captain David Payne. A drifter and ne’er-do-well, Payne had served briefly in the Kansas militia and the territorial legislature. Yet he was a zealot of sorts, and in the settlement of Indian lands he had at last found his cause.

Advertising widely, Payne made fiery speeches exhorting the people to action, and gradually organized a colony of settlers. Every six months or so he’d led his scruffy band of fanatics into the Unassigned Lands, and just as regularly, the army ejected them. After several such invasions, each of which was a spectacular failure, Payne’s followers had become known as the Boomers. They were said to be booming the settlement of Indian Territory.

Though saner men deplored his tactics, Payne wasn’t alone in the fight. Railroads and politicians and merchant princes, all with their own axes to grind, had rallied to the cause. That they were using the Boomers to their own ends was patently obvious. But Payne and his rabble scarcely seemed to care. Frustrated martyrs in a holy quest, they would have joined hands with the devil himself to break the deadlock.

Tilghman’s woolgathering was broken by the sound of curses and shouts. Several camps down, where a fire blazed beside an overloaded wagon, two men squared off with knives. A crowd had formed a circle around them, goading the men on with guttural murmurs. Fights were common, fueled by liquor and building tension as the day for the land rush approached. But thus far no one had resorted to weapons.

No longer a lawman, Tilghman nonetheless reacted out of ingrained instinct. He hurried forward, Sutton only a step behind, as the two men slashed at one another, the steel of their knives glinting in the firelight. Shoving through the crowd, he swept his coat aside, drew a Colt Peacemaker from the holster on his hip, and thunked the nearest man over the head. The man went down as though struck by a sledgehammer.

The crowd was stunned into silence. But the other man instantly turned on Tilghman with his knife. His eyes were bloodshot from too much whiskey, his face contorted in an expression of rage. He advanced, flicking the blade with a drunken leer.

C’mon ahead, he said in a surly voice. Just as soon cut you as him.

Tilghman was tall, broad through the shoulders, hard as spring-steel. The firelight reflected off his cold blue eyes, showering his chestnut hair and brushy mustache with a touch of orange. He thumbed the hammer on his Colt, the metallic sound somehow deadlier in the stillness.

Drop the knife, he said quietly. Otherwise you won’t be making the run tomorrow.

Kiss my rusty ass! the drunk snarled. You got no call buttin’ in on a private fight.

Tilghman stared at him. Let’s just say I made it my business. Do yourself a favor—don’t push it.

Gawddammit to hell anyway!

The man tossed his knife on the ground. He whirled around, bulling his way through the crowd, and stormed off into the night. Tilghman slowly lowered the hammer and holstered his pistol. He turned, nodding to Sutton, and walked back toward their camp. Sutton whistled softly under his breath.

Jumpin’ Jesus, Bill! You could’ve got yourself killed.

Not much chance of that, Fred. Those boys were blind drunk.

Yeah, but you’re not wearin’ a badge anymore—remember?

I reckon old habits die hard. No sense letting them carve on one another.

Tilghman’s tone ended the discussion. At the campsite, he poured coffee into a galvanized cup and resumed staring into the night. Sutton, who understood the solitary nature of his friend, squatted down by the fire. He idly wondered if Tilghman had done the right thing by resigning as a lawman.

For his part, Tilghman dismissed from mind the knife fight. During his years in Dodge City, he had buffaloed countless drunken cowhands, whacking them upside the head with a pistol barrel. In the overall scheme of things, one more troublemaker hardly seemed to matter. His thoughts returned to tomorrow, the land rush, a new life. Oklahoma Territory.

Never had there been anything like it. President Benjamin Harrison’s proclamation opening the Unassigned Lands to settlement had created a sensation. Newspapers across the nation carried stories of the great run and what was described as the Garden Spot of the World. America turned its eye to Oklahoma Territory, drawn by the prospect of free land. The scintillating prose of journalists brought them hurrying westward by the tens of thousands.

Unstated in these news stories was the tale of intrigue and political skulduggery which lay behind the opening of Indian Lands. The Boomers’ squalling demands, though loud and impressive, were merely window dressing. Instead, it was the railroads—and their free-spending lobbyists—who brought unremitting pressure to bear on Congress. The first step had been to declare the right of eminent domain in Indian Territory.

By 1888 four railroads had laid track through the Nations, the lands of the Five Civilized Tribes. This cleared the way for settlement, and shortly after his inauguration, President Harrison decreed that the Unassigned Lands would be opened to homesteading at high noon on April 22, 1889. But it would be on a first-come-first-served basis, a race of sorts with millions of acres of virgin prairie as the prize.

The land-hungry multitudes cared little for whose ultimate benefit it had been organized. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants were pouring into America each year, and they were concerned not so much with the land of the free as with free land. Here was something for nothing, and they flooded westward to share in the spoils.

Nearly one hundred thousand strong, they gathered north and south along the borders of the Unassigned Lands. They came in covered wagons and buckboards, on horseback and aboard trains, straining for a glimpse of what would soon become Oklahoma Territory. And of a single mind, they came to stay.

Among them was Bill Tilghman. Like thousands of others, he had come seeking opportunity, and in no small sense, a place to start over. The old life was gone, withered to nothing, and his gaze had turned toward the last frontier. A land where men of purpose might scatter the ashes of the past and look instead to the future.

A westering man, Tilghman had moved with his family in 1856 to a farm near Atchison, Kansas. At sixteen, he became a buffalo hunter, and later, operating out of Fort Dodge, he’d scouted for the army. In 1877, serving under Bat Masterson, he had been appointed a deputy sheriff of Ford County. Over the next several years he had worked closely with fellow peace officers such as Jim and Ed Masterson, brothers of Bat Masterson. During the same period, he’d developed a friendship with Wyatt Earp, assistant town marshal of Dodge City.

In 1884, Tilghman himself had been appointed town marshal, where he served for four years. Though Wyatt Earp later captured national headlines after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Tilghman’s fame was far greater among outlaws and in western boomtowns. He was considered the deadliest lawman of all the frontier marshals, having killed four men in gunfights. Earp and Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok got the headlines. Tilghman got the reputation as a man to avoid at all costs.

Yet, unlike many peace officers, he was a family man. He’d married a Kansas girl, and together with another old friend, Neal Brown, they had built a ranch outside Dodge City. Their principal business was raising horses, providing saddlestock for the Army as well as other ranches. Then, not quite six months past, Tilghman’s wife had suddenly taken ill with influenza and died.

To Tilghman, her death somehow represented an end to that part of his life. Shortly afterward he’d sold the ranch except for the finest breeding stock, and resigned as marshal of Dodge City. The Oklahoma Land Rush was forthcoming, and he had seen that as a new beginning, a place without raw memories. Once he was settled, he planned to send for Neal Brown and the horses. His attention was now fixed on Oklahoma Territory. A new life.

Tilghman and Sutton had arrived early that afternoon aboard the lead train in a caravan of eleven trains organized by the Santa Fe. Their immediate goal was the townsite of Guthrie, some twenty miles south, situated along the railroad tracks just below the Cimarron River. Tilghman had chosen Guthrie over the other major townsite, Oklahoma City, based on his assessment of the economic future of the territory. Before nightfall tomorrow he meant to have a sizable stake in that future.

Behind him in Kansas, Tilghman had left fame. Somehow, once he’d buried his wife, his reputation as a lawman had ceased to matter. The new life he envisioned was that of a businessman, a man of property and substance. Others would come along to take up the badge, enforce the law, and put the lawless behind bars. He was content to leave the past in the past.

Fred Sutton moved to stand beside him. For a moment, they stared out over the campfires, into the darkness beyond. Then, with a bemused smile, Sutton motioned southward.

What do you see out there, Bill?

Nothing, Tilghman said slowly. And everything.

What he saw was a land where a man of thirty-five could start fresh. A world newborn.

CHAPTER 2

The noonday sun was almost directly overhead. A cavalry officer, followed by a trooper with a bugle, rode slowly to a high point of ground. Below, a thin line of mounted troopers, extending east and west out of sight, held their carbines pointed skyward.

Silence enveloped the land. The quiet was eerie, an unnatural stillness, broken only by the stamping hooves of horses and the chuffing hiss of locomotives. On the small knoll the army officer stared at his pocket watch, and in the distance, hushed and waiting, over fifty thousand homesteaders stared at the knoll. The Oklahoma Land Rush was about to begin.

Tilghman and Sutton were seated in the first passenger coach on the lead train. They watched through the windows as men on swift ponies and those aboard wagons struggled to hold their horses in check. Tilghman knew that the horseback riders, at the beginning of the race, would outdistance the train. But the Guthrie townsite was twenty miles south, and no horse could outrun a train over that distance. He was confident of winning the race.

Overnight the news circulated that added trains had been laid on at the southern boundary of the Unassigned Lands. Yet Tilghman was unconcerned, for the jump-off point was the South Canadian River, closer to the Oklahoma City townsite than to Guthrie. That news, along with thousands more arriving at the northern boundary during the night, widely increased the air of tension and excitement. There were now over one hundred thousand poised for the land rush.

The troublesome thing to Tilghman was not the number of people. Instead, he was bothered by those who refused to play by the rules. These men were being called Sooners, since they crossed the line too soon. Despite the soldiers’ vigilance, they had sneaked over the border under cover of darkness, planning to hide until the run started and then lay claim to the choice lands. Cavalry patrols had flushed hundreds of them out of hiding, but word spread that there were several times that number who had escaped detection. This left the law-abiding homesteaders in an ugly mood.

All along the line people were gripped by the fear that there wouldn’t be enough good land to go around. As noon approached, and the tension became pervasive, their mood turned to one of near hysteria. Since early morning the Santa Fe had moved four additional trains into position, fifteen now one behind the other, loaded with still more land-hungry settlers.

The men on horseback were reasonably certain they could outdistance the trains in the short run. But those in wagons and buckboards (by far the greater number) knew they would arrive too late for a chance at the most desirable claims. Tempers flared, fistfights broke out, and as the minutes ticked away fully fifty thousand people jostled and shoved for a better spot along the starting line.

On the knoll, the cavalry officer stared intently at his pocket watch. As the hands of the watch merged, precisely at high noon, he dropped an upraised arm. The trooper beside him put the bugle to his mouth and blew a single piercing blast. On signal, the cavalrymen below discharged their carbines into the air, but the gunfire was smothered beneath a thunderous human roar. The troopers scattered to avoid the onrushing stampede.

Horses reared and whips cracked, men dug savagely with their spurs, and in a sudden dust-choked wedge, a wave of humanity surged across the starting line. At first it seemed a mad scramble, as the earth trembled and trains gained headway. But within moments the race was decided for choice claims to the immediate south of the border.

Out of the blinding dust cloud emerged the swiftest horses, spurred into a wild-eyed gallop. Behind them, strung out and gaining speed, came the trains. Scattered across the countryside, quickly losing ground, wagons and buckboards, and even one solitary soul on a high-wheeled bicycle, brought up the rear. America’s first great land rush was under way at last.

From the lead train, Tilghman watched as the horsemen broke clear and sped off into the distance. Not far away he saw two wagons collide and upend, spilling people and household goods across the prairie. He and Sutton exchanged an amused look as the adventurous soul on the bicycle quickly fell behind, obscured in a whirling cloud of dust. Then, as the train gathered speed, smoke and soot from the engine drifted through the open window. They sat back in their seats.

Judas Priest! Sutton hooted. Never saw anything that could hold a candle to that. We could’ve sold tickets!

Tilghman smiled. Hell, that’s just the start. The real fun’s yet to come—he nodded out the window—when they butt heads with the Sooners.

Yeah, I suppose you’re right. There’s liable to be some knock-down-drag-out brawls before this day’s over.

Fisticuffs would be the least of it, Fred. There’s people out there willing to kill for a choice piece of land.

Sutton looked somber. You think we’ll run into trouble at Guthrie?

All depends, Tilghman allowed. We’ll see if anybody’s on the ground when we get there. Or leastways, the piece of ground we want.

Every townsite claimant was entitled to stake out two lots. Between them, Tilghman and Sutton planned to stake claim to four lots. One of those, the choice lot, would be devoted to their joint enterprise. They intended to open the first sports-betting emporium in Oklahoma Territory.

In recent years, a cottage industry had sprung up around sports betting. Horse races, such as the Kentucky Derby, and championship prize fights had become national in scope with the advent of the telegraph. The results, transmitted from coast to coast by wire, enabled bettors to wager on a multitude of sports events. Sutton, along with other saloonkeepers in Dodge City, had provided an informal service for his customers. In Guthrie, he and Tilghman meant to corner the market with an across-the-board sports book. They envisioned it as becoming a veritable money tree.

Mr. Tilghman?

A man of distinguished bearing stood in the aisle beside their seats. He was perhaps fifty, with a mane of silver hair, and dressed in finely tailored clothes. He smiled pleasantly.

William Tilghman? he inquired. Formerly the marshal of Dodge City?

Guilty on all counts, Tilghman said, climbing to his feet. What can I do for you?

Allow me to introduce myself. Colonel Daniel F. Dyer, formerly adjutant to General Sherman and late of Kansas City. I dabble in real estate and other ventures.

Tilghman accepted his handshake. You aim to settle in Guthrie, Colonel?

Indeed, Dyer affirmed. A burgeoning new land with unlimited opportunity for investment. Of course, the magnitude of such opportunity attracts the undesirable element as well.

Likely draw them like flies to honey.

Mr. Tilghman, I am a man of some wealth and political influence. I intend to play an instrumental role in making Guthrie the capital of Oklahoma Territory. I would like to enlist your aid in furthering that goal.

Tilghman appeared puzzled. Politics aren’t my game, Colonel.

Quite so, Dyer agreed. Yet you are a law officer of the first order, Mr. Tilghman. And Guthrie, as the territorial capital, must set an example for law and order.

Sounds like you’re offering me a job.

All in good time, when we have established a city government. But, yes, Mr. Tilghman, I would be honored to propose your name for chief of police.

Sorry, Tilghman said amiably. I quit law work when I left Dodge. Business is my game now.

Is it? Dyer said with a dubious expression. Last night, I observed your rout of those two unsavory characters. From all appearances, you’ve hardly lost your taste for law enforcement.

Chalk it up to old habits, Colonel. I’ll have to wean myself off that one.

No need for a hasty decision, Mr. Tilghman. Think it over at your leisure. We’ll talk again.

Tilghman grinned. Talk won’t change things, Colonel. I’ve got other irons in the fire.

Nonetheless, you are admirably suited to the law, Mr. Tilghman. Give it some thought and we’ll talk in Guthrie.

Dyer strolled off down the aisle. Tilghman resumed his seat and traded a look with Sutton. After a quick glance over his shoulder, Sutton shook his head.

There’s a gent not accustomed to taking ‘no’ for an answer.

Guess he’ll just have to learn. Like I told him, I’m done with law work.

Sutton silently wondered if that were the case. Some habits were harder to break than others.

*   *   *

Shortly before two that afternoon, Tilghman and Sutton stepped off the train at the Guthrie townsite. Neither of them had ever traveled this far into Indian lands, and they took a moment to get their bearings. What they saw hardly had the look of the future capital of Oklahoma Territory.

Before them stretched a rolling plain, bordered in the distance by stunted knolls. The Santa Fe tracks curved off to the southwest, roughly paralleled on the west by Cottonwood Creek. East of the tracks, directly across from a meandering bend in the stream, was a small depot flanked by a section house and a water tank. Several hundred yards east of the depot was an even smaller structure, the federal land office. The rest was empty land.

Three buildings and a water tank constituted the town of Guthrie.

Tilghman and Sutton skirted the depot, headed on beeline for the land office. There were now only minutes to spare, for hundreds of men were pouring off the train and running in the same direction. Reason dictated that the center of town would be located near the land office, and it was here that Tilghman meant to stake their lots. But as he hurried forward several men were already erecting a tent catty-cornered from the land office.

Tilghman immediately tagged them as Sooners. Yet there were other lots and he was satisfied to let latecomers argue the matter. He paced off twenty steps due north of the land office and an equal distance east of the tent. There he drove his stake, with his initials carved in bold letters at the top. Then, moving quickly, he repeated the process, hammering a second stake into an adjacent lot.

Sutton, meanwhile, was scurrying around what would logically represent an opposite corner. He jabbed two stakes in the ground on lots side by side, and not a minute too soon. The landscape all of a sudden sprouted horsemen and a bedlam of humanity emptying off of trains. Where moments before there had been a tranquil prairie the earth was now covered with a frenzied swarm of men, racing mindlessly to plant their stakes in what seemed the choicest spot.

Disputes erupted immediately as men attempted to claim the same lots, and within minutes a dozen slugfests were in progress. But no one came anywhere near the corner north of the land office, or the corner directly opposite. Tilghman stood between his stakes, hand on his pistol, and Sutton adopted a similar posture across the way. The message was clear, and however desperate for land, other men heeded it.

By nightfall Guthrie was a city of tents. Still, rather than sanity restored, pandemonium continued to reign. The Santa Fe station agent quit his post to stake a claim, and a southbound train collided head-on with a northbound from Oklahoma City. Cavalry troopers battled mobs of claim jumpers, who found their dirty work easier done in the dark. Saloons conducted a thriving business from planks resting across barrels, and bordello tents began servicing customers who apparently had a highly attuned sense of direction. Torches lit the night on what gave every appearance of a demented anthill.

Tilghman and Sutton maintained their vigil on opposite corners. They watched as land speculation flourished, rising to a fever pitch in the glow of blazing torches. Hundreds of men had staked claims for no other purpose than to sell them to the highest bidder, and many lots were resold on the hour. Speculators moved swiftly from location to location, dickering and swapping as the future shape of the city took form.

There were no sanitation facilities and no law enforcement. Unfouled drinking water was in short supply, and the stench of a garbage dump slowly settled over the land. By late that night scores of drunken men lay where they had fallen, brought down by the effects of cheap pop-skull whiskey. Yet there were better than ten thousand delirious souls squatted on their claims, and drunk or sober, they were in an exultant mood. They had themselves a town.

Tilghman thought it the greatest circus ever to hit the plains.

CHAPTER 3

There were never enough hours in the day. Tilghman had four projects in various states of completion, and his workday generally stretched from sunrise to well after dark. He often felt like a juggler with one too many balls in the air.

The intersection of Oklahoma Avenue and Second Street, just as he’d surmised that first day, had become the hub of downtown Guthrie. City Hall was taking shape on the southeast corner, and opposite that the post office was under construction. He and Sutton, their claims duly filed, owned the other two corners.

A sawmill as well as a brick kiln were now in operation on the outskirts of town. To meet building demand, the Santa Fe continued to haul in carloads of finished lumber and fixtures from Kansas. Along with the supplies a regiment of carpenters, bricklayers, and stonemasons had arrived in Guthrie. Their services, in the boomtown growth, went to the highest bidder. Others joined a long waiting